Educational Science

Weather Official: 'Alarming Increase' in Lightning Deaths

Lightning killed at least 14 people in the United States during the second half of July, a pace twice as deadly as in a typical year for the same two weeks. In the past two weeks, we've seen an alarming increase in the number of lightning deaths in this country,...

Women Aroused as Quickly as Men

Night vision is not known for helping anyone get better in the bedroom, but infrared cameras reveal that women become aroused as quickly as men. In previous research, sexual arousal was generally detected with instruments that require genital contact and manipulation. One might argue that can spoil the mood. Thermal...

Each September a months-long ritual starts up again in the Japanese villages of Taiji and Futo. Fishermen herd hundreds of dolphins into shallow bays by banging on partially submerged rods. Researchers say the dolphins are corralled into nets and then speared, hooked, hoisted by their tails [image], and finally eviscerated...

Odd Evolution: Crickets Lose Their Song

In just a few generations, the male crickets on Kauai underwent a drastic genetic change that rendered them incapable of belting out courtship songs, according to a new study. Typically, male field crickets sport curved wings, and by rubbing a sharp ridge of one wing with a rough part of...

Clues to 'Black Paul Bunyan' Found

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) -- Archaeologists excavating the 200-year-old graves of a slave family said Tuesday that they recovered several artifacts that could shed light on the life of a man dubbed the black Paul Bunyan.'' However, the scientists uncovered no genetic material from Venture Smith, who is depicted in...

Legendary 'Unicorns' Have Individual Voices

Arctic whales whose long, spiraled tusks [image] created the myth of the unicorn seem to call out with individual voices, according to a new study. Researchers think the vocalizations help narwhals to recognize each other or reunite with distant pods, just as our relatives can identify us over the phone,...

Experts: Technology Could Save or Destroy Civilization This Century

NEW YORK—The continual advancement of technology will be critical in determining whether humanity will evolve into a true global civilization or destroy itself in the next century, a panel of experts said this week. In the next 100 years, humanity could leap forward into a true global civilization—complete with a...

Tall Women More Likely to Have Twins

A researcher who specializes in multiple-birth pregnancies has confirmed that taller women are more likely to have twins. Taller women have more of an insulin-like growth factor that has been linked to height and to the rate of twins in previous work. Dr. Gary Steinman, an obstetrician at Long Island...

Atomic Physics Predicts Successful Store Location

Calculations of how atoms interact could help business owners find the best places to locate their stores. Researcher Pablo Jensen, a computational physicist at the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Lyon, France, studied the locations of businesses in that city. His goal was to determine which varieties of stores seem to...

Study: Global Warming Near Critical Level

Global temperatures are dangerously close to the highest ever estimated to have occurred in the past million years, scientists reported today. In a study that analyzed temperatures around the globe, researchers found that Earth has been warming rapidly, nearly 0.36 degrees Fahrenheit (0.2 degrees Celsius) in the last 30 years...